In 1999 Warren Ellis watched Nina Simone play live at Meltdown. After the show ended he rushed on stage and carefully rescued her chewing gum in a towel from where she'd stuck it to her piano. His new book, sparked off by this incident, is about the alchemy that produces art, obsessiveness and memory
Touring in support of the kind of retrospective that the band, and their fans, truly deserve, Ian Wade finds the Human League showcasing their versatility and their steadfast commitment to being — as the record says — "a very British synthesizer group." (Photos by Maria Jefferis.)